Reflections, Reviews and News from the worlds of Opera and Classical Music

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

Semperoper Dresden: Götterdämmerung

1 November 2017

Christian Thielemann conducts two complete Ring cycles in Dresden early next year,
but I’ve been experiencing the tetralogy at a slow pace as he’s been building
it up over the past 21 months or so: he began with Walküre early last year and followed it up with Rheingold a year ago and Siegfried in January.

Such an arrangement doesn’t help for overall appreciation of
Willy Decker’s production (first seen here in the early 2000s), but it struck me as being at its very best in this
final instalment: uncluttered, understated and often deeply moving.

Indeed,
dramatically speaking, I think this was the most moving performance of this
grandest of grand finales that I’ve seen, to a large extent because of the
detailed characterisation as revived here—no revival director was credited as
such, but Alexander Brendel and Bernd Gierke were on the bill for Abendspielleitung and Regieassistenz respectively—matched by
terrific acting from about as good a cast as one could expect to see in the
piece these days.

Nina Stemme’s now familiar Brünnhilde retained a powerful
sense of nobility throughout, and she still sings with astonishing power and
commitment, even if the voice seemed to take a little while to crank up to full power.

Iain Paterson’s Gunther was outstanding, impeccably sung and
charting a detailed trajectory louche lack of concern to a painful realisation
of what he was becoming part of.

(click to enlarge)

Falk Struckmann remains a bass-baritone rather
than a true bass, but his complex timbre—an oily maelstrom of blacks and greys—made
for a properly threatening and commanding Hagen. Edith Haller’s vulnerable,
desperate Gutrune added to a fully convincing picture, as did Christa Mayer’s
moving, impassioned Waltraute.

Andreas Schager had some moments of strain as Siegfried—only
the truly superhuman don't—but rang out heroically, creating a believable
figure quick to be seduced, desperate to join in with Hagen and Gunther as if
starved of some good old laddish high jinks.

Helped by the clear-minded economy
of the production—the stage emptied as a weary, heartbroken Wotan slowly walked
on to observe—Schager delivered a death scene shocking power, underlined by
conducting of almost suffocating dramatic weight from Thielemann.

The conductor’s approach to this score, as before, is
grandly expansive, always rooted deep in some primeval harmonic soil, often
daringly drawn out and often also, it has to be said, rather pear-shaped: the
lower brass are allowed to create a bulbousness in the overall sound that, as
in the final minutes of the Immolation Scene, engulfs all else. Elsewhere,
particularly in Act 2, the singers struggled to be heard against an orchestral
backdrop that the conductor seemed unwilling to pare down.

But it’s a small price to pay for a musical vision that is
so coherent and imposing, which attempts, it seems, at every turn to convey the
sheer vastness of Wagner’s own conception. And the playing of Staatskapelle
was, on the whole, magnificent, offering a sound of rounded refinement and
silky virtuosity.

A final word for Decker’s production and Wolfgang Dussmann’s
designs. In the previous instalments we’d had the idea of the tetralogy being
staged by Wotan himself, variously performed and observed by the cycle’s
characters.

It had occasionally felt a little fussy. Here, though, it came
together as vision of remarkably refreshing clarity and poetic beauty: an
object lesson in economy and musical sensitivity that reached a highpoint at
the very end. Wellgunde slowly rolled on a new virgin sphere—a sphericus rasus?—as the
cast-audience of the previous drama sank down behind a white frame.

She stood
there still, turning towards us only as, after a daringly drawn-out pause, Thielemann
let the final redemptive bars sing out. It was a stunning moment.

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About Me

I am freelance critic, writer and musicologist based in Berlin. I have held editorial posts at Gramophone and Opera, was opera critic of the Spectator and have worked as a critic for the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times. I was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015), now also available – when I checked last – in French, German and Spanish. My PhD (awarded from King's College London in early 2011) was a critical reassessment of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'; further details of my academic work can be found under 'Publications and Papers'.
If you'd like to email me, I can be reached on hugojeshirley[at]gmail.com.

About this Blog

Fatal Conclusions is designed to serve as a modest outlet for various reviews (of varying levels of formality and punctuality) and ideas regarding what's going on in the Opera and Classical Music worlds--and, if I'm feeling adventurous, beyond. Thanks for popping by. I hope you enjoy reading and please feel free to leave comments.